Radio Atlantic, IA – AM 1220

Exhibit honoring fallen Iowa veterans gets big audience at state fair

August 15th, 2013 by Ric Hanson

A traveling memorial honoring Iowa’s fallen veterans at the Iowa State Fair this week, and is scheduled be in Council Bluffs and Treynor, afterward. “Remembering Our Fallen” is a 40-by-10-foot display with pictures of Iowa veterans who died in the line of duty. Inlaid on each soldier’s military profile picture is an image provided by the family with memorabilia, red roses and handwritten letters. The memorial was created by Omaha resident Bill Williams and his wife.

“We had read a story about a father who had lost his son and his concern was that he would be forgotten,” Williams says. “That’s when we came up with the idea to create an exhibit of the pictures of the fallen, not to sit in a museum but to travel from town to town.” In 2011, Williams and his wife made the first memorial as a tribute to fallen Nebraska veterans. After officials from Bellevue University saw it, they sponsored exhibits for more states, including Iowa. Williams wants to create memorials for all 50 states.

“We have ten exhibits now and we’ve been notified of four new deaths in those ten states just in the last week and a half,” Williams says. “As soon as we hear about the latest fallen, we’ll find the photo online and we’ll run a picture of it, 8-by-10 or 5-by-7, and then we’ll put it in a frame and it travels with the exhibit.”

Williams only includes veterans killed in action since September 11th, 2001. He says he’ll continue adding soldiers until the United States ceases military operations in Afghanistan. Bob King, executive director of the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs, says unlike most memorials, this one allows the public see the faces of veterans. “You go to the cemetery and there are no faces, but you walk down through here and there’s Paul Fischer’s face and there’s Bruce Smith’s face and there’s David Kirchoff and Michael Deutch and David Resisnski,” King says. “It brings the remembrance a lot, lot closer to home.”

Retired Navy veteran Dean Kluss of Clarion, says the memorial may help people who haven’t served in the military understand the sacrifice soldiers make. Kluss says, “Today, while we’re here at the fair having a good time, there are people that are in harm’s way that potentially may give their life today for us to be able to enjoy these kind of freedoms.”

After the fair ends, the exhibit will move to cities throughout the state including Cedar Falls, Council Bluffs and Treynor.